An Orphan's Winter

by Sheila Jeffries

  *

  It’s like watching someone die inside, John thought as he studied his daughter’s face across the immaculate white cloth of the hotel dining table. Lottie’s food lay untouched on her plate. She’d shaken her head and insisted she wasn’t hungry, but John asked the waiter to bring it anyway. He’d tucked into his own generous portion of braised steak and roast herby potatoes, adding a mound of sweetcorn and peas and neat sprigs of white cauliflower, pouring copious amounts of gravy over it all.

  ‘Won’t you try even a little bit? These herby potatoes are delicious,’ he said gently, not wanting to put Lottie under any pressure.

  She shook her head. Her eyes stared across at the busy hotel dining room, not seeing it at all.

  ‘What about some American ice-cream?’ he asked her when the waiter came to clear the plates away.

  Lottie shut her eyes and shook her head. When she opened them to the same blank stare, John noticed her cheeks were pale. ‘Perhaps you should go and lie down,’ he suggested.

  ‘No, Daddy, I’ll wait for you,’ Lottie said politely, but her eyes still weren’t looking at him. Well, they were – but they weren’t seeing him.

  It had gone deep, the pain of her mother not turning up. Now they were to board the ship in the morning for the voyage home. Without Olivia.

  The trip of a lifetime, ruined. His daughter’s trust shaken.

  John was furious with his ex-wife. He’d tried to phone, but no one had answered. How could Olivia do this to Lottie? Oh – she could – he reflected grimly. With her track record. Maybe it would hurt Lottie more to know her than not to know her. Maybe it was for the best.

  John searched Lottie’s blank eyes. No, this wasn’t for the best.

  ‘It’s upset you a lot, hasn’t it?’ he asked gently, hoping she would talk. If only she’d cry in his arms, he could smooth her hair and listen, and be her father.

  Lottie shrugged. She pressed her fingers against her left temple and along her eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy, I’ve got a headache. A bad one.’

  John knew about Lottie’s headaches. They were severe and one-sided. He wished Jenny was there. She seemed to know Lottie so well. ‘What does Jenny give you? An aspirin?’

  ‘She does, but it doesn’t work,’ Lottie said. ‘Nan gives me fennel tea and that doesn’t work either. I just have to sleep it off.’

  ‘What brings it on?’ John enquired, anxious to help. Lottie squinted at him through eyes narrowed with pain. He felt sure it was emotional, but he didn’t know how to say so without causing offence.

  ‘I don’t know, and Dr Tregullow doesn’t either.’

  ‘So what can I do to help you?’

  Lottie managed a smile, which quickly faded. ‘You’re really kind, Daddy. It would help if . . .’

  ‘If what?’

  Lottie hesitated. They’d been looking forward to their last evening in New York. A jazz band was coming to the hotel and John had tried to explain his love of jazz to Lottie who had only heard Cornish sea shanties and male-voice choirs. She’d responded to his enthusiasm and his description of the way jazz players could make a saxophone and a trumpet talk to each other. ‘I did want to hear the jazz band,’ Lottie said, ‘but . . . sorry, I really need to sleep.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ John reached across the table and took her hand. It was icy cold. ‘I’m so sorry about your mother’s behaviour.’

  Lottie held on to him, offering him the other hand as well. ‘I don’t care,’ she declared. It was a lie, of course. How much she cared had wound itself into a tight knot of a headache.

  John placed his gentle artistic hand on her brow and found her skin burning hot and clammy. ‘My goodness, you’ve got a fever,’ he said, alarmed. ‘Better get you to bed right now, Lottie. Come on, I’ll take you up to your room.’

  ‘You don’t need to, Daddy, I can manage,’ Lottie protested, but she let him take her up in the lift and escort her to her bedroom, which was next door to his.

  ‘Would you like me to sit with you?’

  ‘No, Daddy – thanks, I’ll be fine. You go and enjoy the jazz.’

  John shook his head. ‘No, Lottie, you’re more important. I shall sit in my room and read, so you know I’m there. Does that help? If you get any worse, you call me straight away. Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  John hovered in the doorway.

  ‘Leave me alone, Daddy. I’ll just go to sleep.’

  ‘Goodnight, Lottie.’ He continued to hover, then added, ‘You’re very precious to me.’

  She heard him unlocking his bedroom next door and the pad of his footsteps going to the window. He would be staring out, bitterly, at the New York skyline. She imagined him opening his brown leather wallet and finding the ticket he’d bought for her mother to come home with them on the ship. Her mother. What kind of a person was she? A person who could ruthlessly break the heart of a kind man, abandon a child, then write a letter begging forgiveness and pleading poverty. Manipulative.

  Why do I love her? Lottie thought, sinking into the stiff, white linen sheets.

  *

  New York looked ghostly in the dim morning light, its angular skyscape half hidden in pearly grey mist. The hum of the city was something Lottie would remember. The eternal hum and the way thousands of windows winked and glimmered like the scales of a fish.

  When she saw the red funnels of the ship and felt the throb of the engines, her spirits had lifted. She was going home. The Atlantic Ocean waited out there, breathing its salty breath, lifting her limp hair, cooling the lingering ache of the headache.

  Going home.

  Seeing Nan’s dear, dependable bulk planted firmly on the quay. Climbing into the back of her battered Austin Seven, its interior covered in sand and chicken feathers. The fragrance of gorse flowers, early primroses and bracken wafting through the open windows. The light in the harbour. The softness of Mufty’s fur.

  Home.

  But first, two weeks on the ship. Lottie marched up the gangway ahead of John, carrying her small brown suitcase with its hard corners and rusting catches. Inside were tiny presents for the family: American chocolate, pencils and rubbers with the Statue of Liberty on them. The best gift was a tiny ship in a bottle for Matt. Lottie had stood in front of it for ages, trying to decide whether she could afford it. Matt would love it and it was a gift from the heart for her secret love, a proud Cornish man with his own boat, free and alive. She hoped he would be there in the harbour when she got home.

  ‘Shall we stand at the back and watch New York disappearing?’ John said, once they had found their cabins.

  ‘Okay.’ Lottie knew he was upset about her mother. She sensed he didn’t know what to say to comfort her. ‘I want New York to disappear,’ she added. ‘It was a dream-come-true gone wrong for me.’

  ‘It was unforgivable,’ John said grimly. ‘I’m furious with Olivia for not turning up. Absolutely furious. For you. How could she hurt you like that?’

  ‘We don’t know why, do we?’ Lottie said as they leaned on the rails, the ship throbbing gently under their feet. People were still streaming up the gangway with suitcases. She found herself watching them, a shadow of hope hovering at the back of her mind. Would her elusive mother turn up at the last minute?

  ‘I’ve still got her ticket,’ John said, patting the pocket where he kept his wallet. ‘What a waste of money.’

  Lottie watched the anger settling in his eyes. Her father was normally calm and unruffled, and in the three years she had known him she’d never seen him angry. What would he do if Olivia did turn up now?

  The stream of passengers boarding the ship was dwindling, the last few hurrying up the gangway, the steward checking their tickets and looking at his watch. The quayside was busy with sailors untying the fat ropes. The hope in Lottie’s heart vanished with a final sting of pain. It was over. She would never see her mother again. She’d been looking forward to it so intensely.

  ‘My mother didn’t want me, did she?’r />
  ‘I can’t answer that question,’ John said firmly. ‘Nobody knows what feelings lurk in another person’s heart.’

  ‘Well, that’s what is in my heart.’ Lottie wanted answers. The question burned inside her, like a bonfire between her and her normal life. A fire she must walk through to get to Nan and Mufty and beautiful St Ives. ‘Did she ever want me? When I was born . . . did she love me then?’

  John hesitated. ‘I’m sorry to say I wasn’t there, Lottie, and I regret that very much. I was working in Canada, building bridges on the railway, and she sent me a telegram. It said: BABY GIRL BORN EARLY THIS MORNING. NAMED HER CHARLOTTE. COME HOME AND SEE HER.’

  Lottie’s eyes widened. ‘And did you?’

  ‘I did my best – but I was the engineer, the only engineer, and without me work would have stopped. I was responsible for hundreds of men who were working hard to feed their families. Olivia never understood my commitment. I wrote home and sent her some money, of course, but it was weeks before I could go, and then it took another three weeks to get there. You were born on the eighth of May and I first saw you in late August.’

  ‘Was she holding me when you first saw me?’

  ‘No – you were in a cradle with a lace canopy, and you were truly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.’ John’s eyes went misty. He patted his heart. ‘I loved you immediately – in here – in my beating heart. You were the most precious gift.’

  Lottie soaked up this impassioned account from her father. Even though she’d heard it before, she wanted it again and again like a favourite fairy tale. Each time a new question floated to the top. ‘Did you pick me up?’ she asked, imagining John’s powerful hands reaching into the cradle.

  ‘I asked if I could hold you and Olivia said . . . she said, “Certainly not.” ’ His voice broke with the memory. ‘She . . . she said my hands were ingrained with dirt, which they were, of course – I’m an engineer, not a butler. So I gave you a finger to hold, and your tiny, magical fist curled around it and held on so tightly. You gazed up at me with dark blue, knowing eyes. I couldn’t help it – I reached into the cradle and picked you up, and you were like an enchanted bundle of softness and joy. I held you to my chest and felt your strong little heart beating so fast against mine. Awesome love. Love like I’d never experienced.’

  Entranced by such a comforting affirmation of love, Lottie listened, her soul in her eyes, the bustle of the ship distant like a world veiled by soft net curtains. Usually a story ended there. A happy ending, sealing it forever. But today, in the shadow of her mother’s betrayal, a new question flickered its encroaching fire. ‘What did my mother do then? Was she angry?’

  John’s smile vanished. ‘I looked up at her, wanting to share my joy – and the look in her eyes was something I’ll never forget, never understand, and never, ever forgive.’

  ‘What kind of a look? Tell me, Daddy. I need to know.’

  He nodded. The memory crouched in his fingers clamped together, the knuckles pearly white. ‘Your mother looked at me with silent, burning rage. Unquenchable. Irreversible. It was a key moment in my life, and yours. I felt trapped between beauty and the beast.’

  Shocked, Lottie was compelled to ask another question. ‘What did she do next?’

  ‘I put you down, reluctantly, in your cradle, and Olivia ripped off the little white matinée coat you were wearing and threw it at me. I’d made it dirty, she’d said. I stuffed it in my pocket and left the house with tears in my eyes. I still have it, that tiny white coat. Many times, when the loneliness of being far from home got to me, I took it out and held it close to my heart, and prayed I would find you again.’

  ‘Oh, Daddy.’ Lottie gazed at him in a wave of compassion. As she tried to find words to comfort him, she saw him stiffen and look sharply towards the quayside where a lot of shouting was going on, preparing the ship to leave. Men’s voices. And another voice, oddly familiar, crying out, ‘Wait, wait, I’ve got to get on that ship.’

  A woman was running up the quay, her blonde curls bobbing.

  ‘That’s her!’ John’s voice turned to a business-like bark. He took out his wallet and neatly extracted Olivia’s boarding pass. ‘There you are, Lottie. You’re going to meet your mother after all.’

  Something snapped in Lottie’s mind. Faced with her mother’s arrival after hearing that story from John, she was plunging into a whirlpool of hostility and confusion.

  Olivia was wearing a red coat, and even from a distance Lottie could see the glint of her tormented eyes sweeping the ship, and already the effect she was having on John was disturbing. He was breathing too fast. His eyes had changed from soulful honesty to an iron-cold hardness. ‘I’ll go down with her ticket,’ he said in clipped syllables. ‘You stay here.’

  Lottie straightened her back and lifted her chin in defence. ‘I shall go to my cabin,’ she announced, ‘and don’t disturb me. I don’t want to see her. Not now. Not ever! I wish I didn’t have a mother.’

  ‘Lottie! You don’t mean that.’

  ‘I do.’

  Devastated, John met his daughter’s determined eyes. ‘I’ve got to go down and meet her quickly,’ he said. ‘Please – don’t be difficult.’

  ‘Difficult?’ Lottie tasted the bitterness of his inappropriate word. ‘I’m not being difficult, I’m being honest. She is the one who’s being difficult. She ruined my life and I’m not going to let her ruin any more of it. Keep her away from me.’

  John’s eyes were judging Lottie, then darting back to the frantic figure of Olivia still arguing with stewards on the gangway.

  She’s bewitching him already, Lottie thought, furious as she got up and headed down to her cabin.

  John hurried towards the gangway, Olivia’s ticket in his hand. Why, why, why did she manage to look so alluring? Such wide eyes and a scarlet coat casting a glow on her cheeks. And why did he have a terrible feeling that he was about to fall into her trap all over again?

  *

  ‘What are you doing in there?’

  Jenny froze and dropped five stitches in the jumper she was knitting for Lottie. Nan’s voice blasted the sparrows out of the yard and resounded over the cliffs and into the huddled streets of St Ives.

  In the split-second of silence that followed, Jenny disentangled herself from the knitting and limped to the open window. She wondered what Tom had done now to incur Nan’s wrath. But it wasn’t Tom. Nan loomed in the middle of the yard, a bowl of corn in one hand, her neck and shoulders rigid with rage as she stared towards Mufty’s stable.

  Climbing out over the door was a child. A muddle of thin legs and bony elbows, his slate-coloured clothes tattered, his small bare feet dirty and a bright trickle of blood running down one shin. Glancing at Nan with huge eyes, he scrambled over the door and fled across the yard. Despite another bellow from Nan, he didn’t stop, but flung himself over the Cornish hedge, dislodging a stone and catching his jacket on a bramble.

  ‘Don’t you ever come here again.’ Nan banged her tall walking stick on the ground. ‘Insolent little guttersnipe.’

  Tom came charging out of the barn door, his pounding feet scuffing up clouds of dust from the cobbled yard. ‘I’ll get him, Nan. He were pinching eggs.’

  Nan opened her mouth to roar at Tom, and shut it again as Tom’s sturdy figure sprinted across the yard, vaulted expertly over the hedge, and set off in pursuit of the fleeing boy.

  ‘Thieving, disreputable brat,’ Nan muttered and flung an arc of corn across the yard for the flock of speckled and honey-brown chickens, who began pecking it like clockwork hens.

  Jenny called out from the window. ‘Where did he come from, Nan?’

  ‘No idea,’ Nan said. ‘He was in the hayloft door when I saw him, and his only way out was through Mufty’s stable. I assume it was a boy, though his hair was long enough for a girl – and his clothes were in shreds.’

  ‘Poor lad,’ Jenny said compassionately. ‘So thin. Such bony little ankles.’

  N
an tutted. ‘I’ll give him “poor lad” if he comes here again.’ She picked up a turnip that the fleeing boy had dropped in his mad dash to escape. Further along was a carrot. Obviously, whoever he was had been pinching turnips and carrots from the corner of the barn where they were stored in boxes of sand to last through the winter into spring.

  Jenny pursed her lips and kept quiet. She was learning to let Nan vent her anger at the human race and its imperfections. It wasn’t the only enforced lesson Jenny had battled with in the years since Arnie’s death. A year in hospital with polio. A year without her three precious children, Matt and Tom, and Lottie. It was Nan who had opened her heart and her home to the troubled family, and now keeping the peace was something they worked on daily.

  In her old life, Jenny would have sprinted after the poor, thin boy and probably caught him, given him a good-natured scolding followed by a hot pasty and a decent set of clothes. She hoped Tom would be kind if he managed to catch up with the mysterious boy.

  They had run towards the sea, into the wild, rocky cliffs of Clodgy. Jenny started to worry. Would Tom remember the one rule she’d always drummed into them? Never chase someone towards the edge of the cliffs. At the moment the sea was wild with spring tides and a heavy swell rolling in from a trough of low pressure out in the Atlantic.

  From the window, Jenny could see majestic waves, a long way apart, roaring on to Porthmeor Beach and pounding the Clodgy rocks in bursting white blossoms of spray. She could smell the salt and the sweet coconut fragrance of the gorse flowers out on the cliffs. She ached to be out there, swinging through the cobbled streets of St Ives, a shopping basket over her arm, pausing to chat with friends.

  How she missed her old life.

  Jenny looked down at her leg. The calliper kept her mobile, but slow and sore, and frustrated when the rest of her body wanted to dance. She missed her friends; few of them ventured up to Hendravean. They found Nan too intimidating.